THE WAY THINGS ARE
There are few if any Republicans serving in office on any level in New York City. The majority the Republicans had in the New York State Senate for generations is gone. There have only been a handful of Republicans in the State Assembly for years.
The reasons for the decline of Republicans in New York follows the turning of the party nationally in the Ronald Reagan years from one which had a place for genuinely liberal Republicans into a party which sees policies and programs from a decidedly conservative view.
As our politics have grown further and further apart, the divide has become nasty in character and in these years where the Trump phenomenon has seemed to swallow the Republican Party whole, the nastiness has turned ferocious.
Now has New York followed the crowd or led it?
It supported a strong group of liberal Republicans such as US Senator Jacob Javits, former Congressman and Mayor John Lindsay and others on the State level like Congressmen Bill Green, Ted Weiss and State Sen Roy Goodman…focusing on good government more than on party label.
And it worked. But it didn’t last.
As corruption in the Democratic Party in New York increased from the late 1980’s there seemed no way to make that combination work again. No one in the Democratic Party seemed interested in going against the corrupt tide and the Republican Party had become so conservative that New Yorkers looked to the Democrats…corrupt party and all.
And so New York has become a one party town – and because that party is corrupt any attempt at good government is ineffective, inept, incompetent and just plain bad.
THUMBS DOWN
Look around you in New York. What do you find?
Amazon “choosing New York” after secret negotiations set it up and then gone so quickly nobody saw it coming. The blame, readily accepted by AOC and a small group of concerned citizens, instead rests on the shoulders of Gov. Andrew Cuomo acting in a cocoon of secrecy to make it happen but then failing to properly deal with Amazon’s negative relationship to unions. Amazon realized that there would be a never-ending fight with activists and unions in the biggest union town in America and simply walked away.
The endless talk about fixing NYCHA, the largest slum in America: All words and no action. Always a headline, never a result. A Federally approved monitor named but still invisible; no new chairman appointed…and the age-old problems persist. Despite the occasional negative media spotlight demanding progress, things don’t change.
A new Homeless Housing program moves people out of homeless shelters, transporting them to houses and apartments in New Jersey. The city pays landlords a year of rent in advance only to discover that they’ve sent people to unlivable slum buildings.
The Mayor’s wife leading an attempt to advance mental health programs has spent $900 million in two years but is unable to explain exactly where the money went or what the program has accomplished. She is now asking the City Council for a quarter of a million dollars more.
The Mayor’s well-advertised attempt to save 20 failing public schools spending $789 million dollars in two years ended abruptly with little or no lasting success. There has never been an independent study of how well his daunted Pre-K for all program is actually doing for four year olds but there are now commercials running to gain continued Mayoral control of schools from the State Legislature. All evidence given to support this demand is spurious at best.
While there was righteous anger about the planned $3 billion in corporate welfare to Amazon, six billion dollars in corporate welfare was given to the largest developer in the city as they constructed a city within a city – Hudson Yards. That amount included $154 million to extend the 7 train one stop from its original destination 42nd Street and 12th Avenue down to 34th Street, the home of Hudson Yards.
$15 million was spent on an election to fill the job of Public Advocate only to repeat the election process three months later.
And now desperate for money to rebuild the Subways ($60 billion) and perhaps help NYCHA ($32 billion) the introduction of congestion pricing although this new income stream won’t do anything but support a new bond issue.
And perhaps it is this last area of New York’s one-party government that deserves the closest look because of what it illustrates about any one-party government in action.
CONGESTION PRICING: THERE’S A BETTER WAY
There are two good reasons for this new approach to taxation: more income for mass transit and a chance that the congestion on Manhattan streets might somehow be lessened.
Yet the real reason for congestion pricing as just passed by the State Legislature is political. Just realize the Governor’s words: this is a first in the entire nation…the first State to use this approach. Cuomo uses “first.” DeBlasio uses “historic.” Both of these boys seek the Presidency as the next step in their political lives.
We know DeBlasio is already running. And we know that Cuomo openly held a $25,000 a couple fundraising event during the budgetary process for lobbyists doing what he always does: take advantage of New York’s ‘pay to play’ laws and saying he will stop when the laws change.
But the Subways do need fixing…and the cost at the moment is $60 billion. Whatever they decide by the introduction of this driver’s tax in 2021 (note the date) all they will be able to raise is one billion dollars a year… not much against a $60 billion need.
Yet there is a tax which exists today and has been with us since 1905..114 years years! It is a Stock Transfer tax which is placed on every trade on the New York Stock Exchange. It raises $11.5 billion a year. From 1905 until 1981 that tax money came to the city. In 1981 thanks to Reagan policies which began the income inequality we know today, that tax was rebated back to the Stock Exchange and the traders. Understand that this tax raises this money every year and then is sent back to the brokers.
Now $11.5 billion is real money for a real need. And yet no one makes a move to make a change.
It is easier to charge an additional $2.50 for every taxi ride killing an already dying business. It is easier to raise tolls on bridges. It is even easier to come up with a complicated congestion pricing scheme with all kinds of problems and exemptions raising very little money for the trouble…easier because it is politically expedient in a one party town with no voices of opposition and everybody going along.
Unless and until this situation changes, New York’s Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty is the closest we’ll get to being The Empire State.
The stock transfer tax rebate is quite a revelation. As for the Amazon deal fiasco, I recall that soon after the deal was announced, Michael Bloomberg said that a more favorable deal could have been negotiated. I suspect that had he been mayor at the time, it would have happened.